Atlanta Unitarian

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from my 7-Month-Old Son (Almost) If you can eat, drink, pee, and poo without incident, you have much cause for satisfaction. The best way to get our needs met is to articulate them clearly, repeatedly, and, if necessary, with volume. It's in our nature to learn, grow, and try new things, with our own interest as our best guide. The best way to learn something is to take an iterative approach rather than a linear one; learning by nature is two steps forward, one harsh bump on the tush. If you're paying attention, the world is a pretty fascinating place. Shadows are particularly interesting because you can't pick them up. The foundation of happiness is being with people who love you for who you are. Can't wait for the next 7 months...!

I've been thinking about modern life and how as an unintentional result of modern convenience we lose our vital connections with the earth and its cycles. I've been reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma , which reveals how thoroughly we've lost touch with the source of our food as a culture. We have little or no understanding of the places, processes, and full price of the sources of our food. Pollan particularly dwells upon the denial that is required for the current system of industrial processing of animals to be acceptable in our culture. He essential says that if we knew where our meat came from, we wouldn't eat it. On another front, the political front, I've increasingly come across the dilemma that many local governments are facing. They are running out of revenues to perform the services their constituents demand, but there is increasing resistance to any type of tax increase. It seems we have lost ourselves in our own political rhetoric -...

Sometimes I wonder if our forward-looking culture does not underestimate the value of making and cultivating memories. We have so many catch phrases for focusing on the future. What's past is past. We need to focus on the task at hand. We need a plan for going forward. Just do it. But life at any stage is composed at least as much by memories as by opportunities, by the path we have followed as much as the path we have ahead. In fact, we are much more likely to discover ourselves by looking backwards than by looking forward. Life has a way of revealing through experience things that would never occur to our imaginations alone. What rituals, what practices, what customs do we have to cherish memories? Our holidays commemorate our civic history, but what about our personal history? Do we use birthdays to reflect backwards? Anniversaries? Graduations? Are we afraid that if we look backwards we will see opportunities missed, rather than life lived? If life is worth living, ...

With the nation embroiled in talk of recession - the media, investors, politicians - Americans seem desperate to avoid entering this dreaded state. Congress and the President rushed to pass a $100 billion + stimulus package. Pundits spin every day about whether or not we are in a recession, and what it would mean if we are. It is my sense that the obsession with recession reveals the dark side of the infamously optimistic American character. What is this desperate state that is so awful that we must try anything to avoid it, and that is so horrific that even if we are in it we had better not go about and acknowledge it? It reminds me very much of someone in the early stages of a depression, when there is still opportunity for denial and distraction. It's like a depressed person who thinks he can put off depression if he can just go on enough ski vacations consecutively. All kinds of denial and avoidance are preferrable to looking the depression squarely in the face. Perhaps, ...

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult. -Hippocrates ... or in modern terms... Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. -John Lennon

Self esteem cannot be created through praise. It cannot be created through achievement, awards, and success. Self esteem can only be grown from within. Like a seed that grows into a flower, self esteem cannot be forced into bloom. The right conditions can be cultivated, but a flower must grow and bloom of its own accord. What are some of the conditions that can help to grow self esteem? Acknowledging and meeting the needs of a person, facilitating their development and capacity, and reflecting back to them their own unique identity and personality. Everyone has the light within them, and when we reflect back their light, we help them see it more clearly. This is the greatest challenge in helping another - not to make them into your idea of good or shape them into your ideal, but rather to help them to cultivate their own voice and come into their own understanding of the true and the good. And ultimately, you must give them the space to bloom of their own accord. The growth and f...

The trend in this modern world is towards continually greater complexity. In a world where the choices that face us are ever more complex, there is a great need for regulation and a variety of mediating institutions that can provide citizens with meaningful information and useful judgments and evaluations. Some examples of the increasingly complex choices we face include the wide variety of financial decisions consumers are faced with, with regard to savings, borrowing, and mortgages; The environmental and social impacts of our lifestyle choices; Our choices with regard to philanthropic activities and their effectiveness; political choices and exercising political influence at the state, federal, and local levels; career development and educational choices; choices relating to the raising of children and managing a family; choices with regard to food consumption, cooking, and dining; choices with regard to physical health, medical treatment, and physical activity. I know that I mys...